A Miracle of Rare Design: A Tragedy of Transcendence - Hardcover

Mike Resnick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312854846 ISBN 13: 9780312854843

Publisher: Tor Books, 1994

Synopsis

On the planet Grotamana, called Medina by humans, Xavier William Lennox met with disaster. Lennox, a travel writer and adventurer, has become fascinated by the secretive golden-skinned natives of Medina, called Fireflies by the Human Republic. But on his first visit he was caught by the Fireflies' high priest while attempting to spy on a sacred ritual in a village forbidden to all foreigners. He was tortured and nearly killed before being left as a warning to other curious Men.
Now Lennox is determined to find out what it is that the aliens want so much to hide. He will return to Medina, and this time he will attempt to discover their secrets from inside their culture, instead of outside. Lennox employs the latest medical breakthroughs to alter his body to resemble a Firefly. He immerses himself in the dialect of a city of Medina distant from the sacred village. He studies what is known of the Fireflies' culture and history, though that knowledge is dangerously limited.
And then he arranges to be dropped back on Medina, in the wasteland between cities, to make his slow way toward the sacred village. If he survives the journey, he thinks he will have learned enough to safely pass the gates of the temple precincts.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Resnick's Kirinyaga saga polarized readers, who generally found the author's obsessions with African cultures either racist or fascinating. By contrast, this new novel, disappointing despite its clever main conceit, likely will leave most readers indifferent as Resnick moves his focus away from an identifiable subtechnological culture and toward a series of alien worlds. When, in order to observe a forbidden temple ritual, Xavier William Lennox disguises himself as a "Firefly" (a member of an alien species that, though vaguely humanoid, has wings and skin that takes on a nocturnal glow), he is discovered, hideously mutilated and swiftly handed back to his own society. Since Lennox is an "exceptionally willful, stubborn, self-centered man," however, when he is offered the opportunity to undergo painful surgery that will reconstruct his body in the image of a Firefly's, in order to become an ambassador to and spy against the aliens, he returns to their planet of Medina. But the conclusion of this particular mission finds Lennox suffering from severe depression, so he allows his body to be reshaped for further missions in increasingly outlandish ways until he gradually sheds his humanity along with his appendages. Resnick's greatest strength has always been his ability to create vivid and imaginative cultures, but here he spends so little time in each of his worlds that they, like his alien Fireflies, seem to flicker only momentarily before fading away.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Xavier William Lennox, daredevil writer and scholar, is fascinated by alien peoples and cultures. On the planet Medina, he attempts to learn the religious secrets of the native Fireflies, only to be captured, horribly mutilated, and left for dead. Lennox, however, bears the Fireflies no ill will, and when Nora Wallace of the Department of Alien Affairs offers him an opportunity to return to Medina in a body surgically altered to function as that of a Firefly, he accepts with alacrity. In return, he must persuade the Fireflies to open up their planet to human mining corporations. His mission duly accomplished, Lennox returns to the human Republic still wearing his Firefly body. When Wallace offers him another job, to rescue four humans marooned on the planet Artismo, he jumps at the chance to be surgically transformed into a native Hawkhorn. Again he triumphs. But with each succeeding mission and transformation--on Tamerlaine as a native Wheeler; on Monticello IV as a Singer--he becomes less and less human, until finally he designs himself a composite body and abandons humanity altogether. Another low-key, thoughtful, absorbing entry from Resnick (Inferno, 1993, etc.). -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0312854846
• ISBN 13: 9780312854843
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 255